Blow the trumpet! The content of these 12 verses in Leviticus 25 is plain. Instructions from Yahweh to Moses presuppose that the Israelites are now living in the Promised Land. Each household has been allotted...

I was at a lunch recently where Matt. 20:20-28 was read devotionally before the meal. It’s the passage where the mother of James and John seeks to stake out some territory for her sons in the kingdom of God...

Iwill not soon forget an image David Williams creates in the opening chapters of his excellent novel, When the English Fall. The image is searing in its horror and in what it portends. Some kind of solar storm...

My wife tells me that I shouldn’t read the news because the news makes me sad. Or angry. Or confused or helpless or despairing or apathetic or cynical. Or some toxic combination of all of the above. She’s...

The subjects of contention in MWR’s Letters & Comments section leave me in a quandary. Having been a Mennonite Church member for 60 years, and on its payroll for 15, I treasure the love that emanates...

Never in human history has such goodness encountered such evil.
On a Friday a man was condemned to death. This man was marked by more love than the world had ever seen — read the stories of how he treated...

Jesus was born into a community of second-class citizens waiting for a liberator. Those who experienced the first Advent endured the weight of oppression — the Roman Empire’s occupation of Judea.
Those of...

I love watching God surprise me. Recently I was asked to respond to a scholarly paper in an Asian conference. Written and presented by a Nigerian, the paper explored the history of the Kanuri people of West...

People who have experienced devastating loss, like the death of a child or a terminal diagnosis, are familiar with the Christian clichés offered with loving intent but that do little to assuage their...

We cannot always predict how we will act under stress. The Apostle Peter declares he will never desert Jesus but before morning has three times denied he even knows Jesus, the Galilean, who is on trial before...

You are the salt of the earth . . . you are the light of the world. — Matt. 5:13-14
“MCC envisions communities in right relationship with God, one another and creation.” I am speaking to a summit for...

Ever since childhood I’ve wondered why we know Daniel by his Hebrew name but his three friends by their Babylonian names.
It’s tempting to divine some spiritual significance to the inconsistency, but...

Our community lost someone a few weeks ago: a young wife, mother of five, a friend and mentor, a follower of Jesus with a passion for the lost. She was living, laughing, serving, loving God with all she had,...

Many of us are all too aware of the brokenness, insecurities, limitations and inadequacies in us and around us. When the women of my congregation got together on Sunday to learn from Julian of Norwich’s...

The Mennonite church needs a conversation about sexual integrity, how people respect their own bodies and those of other people. Sexual abuse — and even sexual promiscuity — requires dehumanizing male...

Two recent conversations about pain . . .
My daughter has lately been coming to terms with the horrors of World War II. They’ve been studying this period of history in school, and last night she watched a...

Lent was a fairly new concept for me when I was in college, and one year I decided to make the ultimate sacrifice — chocolate. I still remember standing in the ice cream parlor, looking at the luscious...